Interestingly enough, while it is true that many
people from all over the world have spotted UFOs the term
does not easily connect to Canada. In fact the word “Canada”
and the word “UFO” are farther apart in most
people’s minds then they are in the dictionary.
But just like everything else Canada has had its share
of weirdness and this includes UFO sightings and UFO searchers.
Canadians, while being rather receptive to the idea that
Extraterrestrials might be appearing at various locations
for mysterious reasons, are a rather “hobbitish”
group of people that firmly think: “if you keep
away from trouble then trouble will keep away from you”.
If only that were true; with such an attitude it might
be imagined that most Canadians wont be concerned about
Extraterrestrials until they start jumping ahead in line
at the local Tim Horton’s. Realistically though,
Canadians have become noted scientists, adventurers, warriors,
artists, writers, and even UFO hunters.

The 1950s were a sort of golden age for UFOs. In
the 1950s the idea of flying saucers and UFOs were
new to people. Project Bluebook and the crash at
Roswell had yet to become pop culture icons and
the Majestic 12 was a strip show in Las Vegas. People
rarely spoke about UFO except to discuss the most
recent science fiction film they’d seen at
the local theatre. At the same time though scientists,
who were just starting to dream about things like
ICBMs and putting a man on the moon took the idea
seriously. Other people taking the idea were high-ranking
men in government and the military. They began to
make serious programs dedicated to finding out if
“aliens” were real, what dangers they
posed, and what to do if they arrived with hostile
intent. One such project was something called Project
Magnet, and one of the stations doing research for
Project Magnet was located just outside of Ottawa,
Canada.

Project Magnet was a genuine attempt to find a “flying
saucer” by means of tracking their magnetic disturbances.
A man named Wilbert Smith thought that these flying metallic
objects must use the earth’s gravity to propel themselves
through the atmosphere. Working in the field of Geo-Magnetism,
Mr. Smith was led to note in a memo he sent on 1950: “we
are on the track of a means whereby the potential energy
of the earth's magnetic field may be abstracted and used.”
Supposedly Mr. Smith made enquiries that led him to be
told by Washington insiders that UFOs were real and that
the government was interested (full memo: http://www.rexresearch.com/smith/magnet.htm)
in working with anyone who could help, including Canadians.

Project Magnet
was given to the Canadian Ministry of Transport and
was classified as secret. It was described: “The
project was quite small; it used facilities of DOT,
with assistance from other government departments, including
the Defence Research Board (DRB) and the National Research
Council (NRC). The project was an outgrowth of work
already being done by Smith and a group of colleagues
within DOT on the collapse of the Earth’s magnetic
field as a source of energy. It was the belief of many
that "FLYING SAUCERS" were operating on magnetic
principles and it was thought the DOT work might explain
their operation.” (1) This means that Ottawa Canada
was host to the world’s first UFO Spotting Station.

It seems
that Project Magnet has some form of success in that
it did detect something… although exactly what
that something was no one is quite sure: “At 3:01
PM., August 8, 1954, the station registered a definite
disturbance, quite different from disturbances registered
by passing aircraft. Smith and his colleagues were alerted
by a built-in alarm system. Regrettably, heavy fog prevailed
and it was impossible to see anything overhead. The
recorded evidence, however, indicated that something
strange had flown within feet of the station.”
(1)

Mr. Smith died in 1962 and never really got a good look
at what would become the field of Ufology. Perhaps if
he had lived a while longer he could have come forward
and told the UFO-search community a little more about
what he was told about UFOs, what he knew about UFO
propulsion, and who had told him what the US did and
did not know about Extraterrestrials while he was involved
with Project Magnet. As most people know, sometime in
the 1960s the nations of NATO (prodded on by Cold War
paranoia) took a completely different view on UFOs…
from then until now it was disinformation campaigns,
weather balloons, and mass hysteria. Never again will
we have the open and naïve governmental attitude
towards UFOs as was visible in the 1950s.